CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JACKSONSANKINTOan airport security seat and slipped her shoes back on. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and her mind didn’t seem to be functioning properly. Questions likeWhy the hell did you walk out of Cameron’s apartment this morning?andWhen did you get to be such a mess over a man?had been running through her mind for hours.
She wasn’t reallyconsidering quitting her job in New York for more time with Cameron, was she? Cameron, the man who wouldn’t fly. Goodbye, ten-year plan. Goodbye, dreams of travel and adventure. No, she couldn’t do that.
The ache of leaving him would fade at some point, wouldn’t it? Because this was unbearable. She had turned him down when he’d offered to take her to the airport. Out of sight, out of mind.Now, only a few hours after she had last buried her face in his chest and breathed in his warm, musky scent, she already regretted it. A few more minutes with his arms around her in the back of the car wouldn’t have made this moment better, but it would be one more memory. And in their two-week history, that was something.
But maybe it was better like this. Most of their morning had been withoutclothes, and it was hard to think about much of anything when Cameron wasn’t dressed. But if he had come back to her hotel room when she’d packed, she would have probably forgotten half her belongings. If she had spent the ride to the airport against his warm, hard body, she might have begged him...
But begged for what? For Cameron to come with her? He had already made it clear that he didn’tdo airplanes.
So what if staying here in Sydney with him would mean crossing off pages of entries in her little red book. So what if he introduced her to games that were made for porn movies. Really good porn movies. She had wanted to travel for her whole life. She wasn’t giving up her little red book or her ten-year plan for a guy she had met two weeks ago. And that was that.
Jacksonblew out a breath and looked at her watch. She still had another hour before her plane took off. She stood up and grabbed her carry-on bag. Coffee usually made everything a little better. Maybe it would even work for heartbreak. Not that this was heartbreak. It was just...readjustment.
The nearest café had a line to the door, but Jackson didn’t have anything better to do. She rolled her bagover to the little shop and parked herself behind the last person. And tried not to look at her phone. She had already looked at Cameron’s message about a hundred times. He wasn’t going to send another one unless she responded. Which she wasn’t going to. At least not until she was far away.
Jackson rubbed her eyes and looked for a distraction. She grabbed a paper off the newsstand and scannedthe front page, slowing to a stop when she reached the bottom. There, in full color, was a photo of two A-list actors posing on the dance floor of the Bennelong Room at the Sydney Opera House. But it wasn’t the actors who caught her eye. It was the little black dress in the background.
Her little black dress. And Cameron’s large, sensual hands in the middle of her rear. His face was loweredto hers. The photo hadn’t caught either of them directly, but it was enough.
She remembered that moment. He was already half-hard and had whispered words in her ear that had made her forget they were in a public place. And she had brushed a lock of hair off his face, as if he were hers for real.
She stared down at the photo as she raced to spin this most public breach of conduct. Technically,they were off the clock at that point, but the board probably wouldn’t care. Could they just make some claim about helping her blend in? Besides, her face was turned, so maybe she wasn’t so identifiable. Damn. She was in PR, for God’s sake. She could do better than that, couldn’t she?
Except she couldn’t. All she could think about right now was the look on Cameron’s face. It was a combinationof want and longing and something else she didn’t even know how to process. And it was printed on the front of theSydney Morning Heraldfor everyone to see.
Maybe the Blackmore Inc. board didn’t read theSydney Morning Herald.
Jackson refolded the paper and slid it back into the newsstand, photo side down.
Shit.
She couldn’t even pretend this was a mistake. She had known the risks,and that hadn’t stopped her. Because in the end she didn’t want to stop. This time, she’d wanted to give in. And she couldn’t make herself regret it.
What the hell was she going to do? Maybe her brain would kick back into gear somewhere over the Pacific. Because she had forty-eight hours before she’d be standing in front of the board. And Harlan Blackmore. If she didn’t come up with something,Harlan Blackmore and his board would come up with their own explanations. And none of them would be good.
Even the magical powers of coffee couldn’t help make this disaster better.
Just as she squeezed her eyes shut in a futile attempt to make it all go away, her phone rang. She pulled it out of her bag, the wordMomin large letters across the screen.
“This isn’t such a great time,Mom,” she said.
“Oh, honey, you’re always too busy,” her mother said. “How do you expect to keep a good man if you don’t even have time for your mother?”
What was Jackson expecting? Anything in the range ofWhat’s wrong, honey?was a stretch, of course, but maybe justI’ll try you later?
“My plane is boarding soon,” Jackson said. Soon, as in within the next forty-five minutes. “Wasthere something quick you wanted to say?”
That got her attention. “Oh, no. Am I calling internationally? Heavens.” Her mother let out a long breath. “Well, I just wanted to remind you that Marcello and Marco are turning three in a few weeks. I didn’t want you to forget. You know, some single dads are coming, some who might consider—”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be there,” she said. “Look, I haveto go.”
Jackson stuffed her phone back into her bag. Her career was teetering on the edge of disaster, her whole body ached for Cameron and her mother was trying to fix her up with single dads. Welcome home.
* * *
Jackson smoothed her dark blue skirt and checked to make sure the top button of her blouse was still buttoned. She had dressed in her most conservative suit, but it wasn’thelping. She was the woman who they had sent over to tame Harlan Blackmore’s rebellious son, only to fall headfirst for his charms. And land on the front page of theSydney Morning Herald. Which maybe, by some miracle, the board hadn’t seen.
